Fidel Castro - The Silver Spoon Bastard (Part I)

You can't have a discussion about Cuba without a lengthy discussion about Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, or as I call him, The Silver Spoon Bastard. I call him this because despite Fidel's lifetime effort to portray himself as the product of humble beginnings he was anything but that. But he was a bastard, and in more ways than one.

Fidel at the age of 3

Castro was the illegitimate son of a very wealthy man who fathered several children (including brother Raul) by way of his mistress, a household kitchen maid who he eventually married. Despite his illegitimacy, Fidel enjoyed all of the advantages that his father's wealth offered.

But Fidel lacked more important things as a child. He lacked the love of his father, who was cold and distant. He lacked legitimacy, which left him without a sense of truly belonging. Finally, he lacked respect from others, something Fidel desperately craved.

Wielding a death blow to Castro's psyche as an adolescent, Fidel's father did not recognize him as a son until Fidel was 17 years old. Until then, Fidel was forced to use his mother's last name. Growing up, Fidel was nicknamed "el bastardo" by schoolmates who teased him mercilessly about his illegitimate status.

As an adult, Castro became the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing who fooled his fellow countrymen and the entire world. Fidel became that wolf as a direct result of an inferiority complex fueled by the constant denigration by his father and the pervasive ridicule by his classmates.

To know Fidel is to understand the man who made Cuba what it is today. But it's impossible to engage in an in depth discussion about "el bastardo" in just one post. This will be Part I, providing a few snapshots of the megalomaniac that was Fidel Castro.

Fidel Castro (Far Left) in prison after his failed coup in 1953

Castro's 1953 mug shots

The first snapshot begins with the year 1953, when a 26-year-old Castro led a failed coup against the Batista government at the Moncada Military Barracks. He was arrested, tried, and sentenced to 15 years in prison, but was pardoned before he served most of his sentence.

Before he was sentenced, Castro made a four-hour speech in his defense and identified five "Revolutionary Laws" he he would have put into immediate effect had the coup been successful:

     1)  Returning power to the people and proclaiming Cuba's 1940 Constitution the supreme Law of the State, until such time as the people should decide to modify or change it;

     2)  Granting property, non-mortgageable and non-transferable, to all planters, non-quota planters, lessees, share-croppers, and squatters, with payments made to the former owners on the basis of the rental that they would have received over ten years;

     3)  Giving workers and employees the right to share 30% of the profits of all the large industrial, mercantile and mining enterprises, including the sugar mill;

     4)  Giving all planters the right to share 55% percent of the sugar productions and minimum quotas; and

     5)  Confiscating all holdings and ill-gotten gains of those who had committed fraud during previous regimes, as well as the holdings and ill-gotten gains of all their legatees and heirs.

A significant number of  intelligent, educated Cubans gullibly swallowed Castro's Kool-Aid. They believed that he would make good on his five "laws". They took him at his word when he also promised that he would not remain in power after the revolution, that he fully intended to restore the democratic rights that existed before Batista usurped power, that he would end legal race discrimination, and that he would invite foreign investment.

What they blindly overlooked was the fact that Castro had a past that betrayed his true belief in Marxism. Castro's father was an avowed Marxist and he molded Fidel into a Marxist from the day he was born.

In addition, as I will discuss in another post, Castro grew to deeply resent the United States, Americans, and everything U.S. as a result of his father's maniacal hatred for the U.S.

Castro knew he had to trivialize his past and  dismissed it as the malevolent rumblings of those who opposed him. He assured the world and his fellow Cubans that he believed in democracy, market economies, and sold his package of goods as a liberal revolution. not a socialist one.

Shortly after taking over, Castro reneged on all his promises. He declared himself to be top dog for life without elections and installed a Marxist regime, filling his government with revolutionary Marxist cronies. Tens of thousands of people who suddenly realized they had been fooled and opposed this change were executed without trial or imprisoned. The rest is a sad chapter in history.

A priest gives last rites to a man about to face a Castro firing squad

Execution at El Paredon (the large wall)

Castro's firing squads claim another victim

Snapshot number two comes from a brief moment in history that defines Fidel Castro better than any other.  It shows what a warped lunatic he was.

In 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Castro pleaded with Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the U.S. In an October 1962 letter to Kruschev, Castro wrote:

"The Soviet Union should never let a situation develop in which the imperialists could carry out the first strike of a nuclear war. That would be the moment to forever eliminate such a danger no matter how hard and terrible such a solution would be."

Despite being a hard line Soviet hawk, Kruschev knew better than anyone the absurdity of Castro's request. In a rebuff to Castro, Khrushchev reminded Fidel that such a war would kill millions of people and it would destroy Cuba. Kruschev called Castro a "hothead" and further told him that heads of state should not be, "...swept away by the popular feelings of hot-headed elements."

It is sobering to learn that it took the restraint of a Soviet Premiere to avert the nuclear holocaust Castro was prepared to initiate. And, the incident puts Fidel Castro into crystal clear perspective - a man who was prepared to accept the annihilation of the entire island of Cuba and all of its inhabitants due to his hatred of the U.S.

It's impossible to comprehend the degree of hatred and the utter lack of compassion for human life that Fidel Castro carried inside him such that he would even consider it an option to initiate a nuclear holocaust. Any man who could so easily accept the extermination of 7,450,000 human beings in Cuba alone, not to mention the potential destruction of planet earth in its entirety, was obviously filled with unimaginable demons.

Fidel Castro was haunted by those demons and carried that hatred inside of him from early childhood. In Part II, I'll discuss how those demons were conceived inside of Fidel at an early age and how they grew as he became older.